Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘postaday2011’

Birds and Travel Go Together

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

 

A northern mockingbird was my first bird of the new year. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 “Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.” — Henry Van Dyke

Travels With Maggie

I’m a passionate birdwatcher, who keeps a list of birds I’ve seen. My life list now totals 696 bird species. It’s a respectable number for this late-blooming birder, but far from spectacular.

If you want to know more about the birding numbers game you should read “The Big Year” by Mark Obmascik. It’s a great read even if you aren’t a birder. It’s about three guys who spend a year chasing birds all across North America. At the whisper of a rare bird alert, they would fly thousands of miles on a minute’s notice.

Although I did once drive 400 miles to see one particular bird, these days I usually just bird where my travels take me. I check out bird festivals going on while I’m in the vicinity, and hook up with local Audubon chapters for birding field trips. This past year these efforts, including one day when I hired a guide to help me find the golden-cheeked warbler that I had been trying to find for three years, earned me 12 new life birds. And yes, the warbler was one of them.

I spotted this yellow-crowned night heron at the Sea Center in Lake Jackson, Texas. -- Photo by Pat Bean

This year’s birding efforts, meanwhile, have begun slower than normal. I’ve been parked in my son’s driveway here in Harker Heights all this week and a cold front moving through the area seems to have kept the birds tucked away.

At least they’re not falling out of the sky dead, as red-winged blackbirds and starlings have been doing in Arkansas the past couple of days. That’s a scary thing because birds, like the canaries coal miners carried into the tunnels with them as their bad air detectors, are indicators of an environment’s health.

My first bird of this new year was a northern mockingbird, appropriate since it’s Texas’ state bird. It was a brilliant gray and white fellow with yellow eyes that landed on a fence about eight feet from my RV window. As I watched, it flashed its long tail in the air – then pooped.

Read Full Post »

A Cold Walk Beneath a Warm Sky

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , on January 3, 2011| 1 Comment »

“The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere, the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling, vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming on sea and continents and islands, each it its turn, as the round earth rolls.” — John Muir

Harker Heights, Texas, sunrise, Jan. 3, 2011. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Maggie, who normally likes to sleep in, woke up early this morning and spoke loudly to me with demanding eyes. I am ready for my walk now.

Yes your majesty, I told her as I put on my shoes and bundled up. My MSN home page said it was 35 degrees outside here in Harker Heights, Texas, where my RV is parked in my son’s driveway for the coming week.

A chill went through my body when, with Maggie on her leash, I stepped down from my RV. It wasn’t from the cold, however. It was from the thrill of seeing this morning’s glowing sunrise. I quickly grabbed my camera and captured its warm brilliance  so I could share. 

John Muir has it so right. We don’t have to travel to see the wonders of Mother Nature.

When we got back from our walk, I gave Maggie extra treats for dragging me out into the cold so early. She gobbled them down, then retreated to her favorite spot on our shared bed. She is now serenading me with her funny, soft snores. Life is good.

Travels With Maggie

Read Full Post »

The Magic of Planning a Journey

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , on January 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Reading for my upcoming adventures on the Blue Ridge Parkway -- Photo by Pat Bean

  “Let your mind start a journey thru a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. Let your soul take you where you long to be … Close your eyes and let your spirit start to soar, and you’ll live as you’ve never lived before.” Erich Fromm

Travels With Maggie

There’s something magical about getting on the road with no destination in mind and stopping whenever and wherever fancy strikes . That was the ideal for my travels before I actually got on the road. It worked – sometimes.

Today I spend endless hours plotting my journeys, like the one I plan to take this spring driving the Blue Ridge Parkway between Smokey Mountain and Shenandoah national parks.

For my upcoming Blue Ridge Parkway adventure, I purchased mile-marker guides of the parkway (Rockfish Gap to Grandfather Mountain and Grandfather Mountain to Great Smokey Mountain NP) by William Lord. I learned from Lord that plans for the Parkway begin in the early 1930s and that upon hearing such news Aunt Caroline Brinegar, a-sittin’ and a-rockin’ in her cabin high in the Blue Ridge by Air Bellows Gap slapped her knee and laughed at the notion. “Why Lord have mercy, no body a-living’ could put one of them through here.”

This is an actual page from my Blue Ridge Parkway plans. I note the campground where I expect to stay for the night with a telephone number so I can either make a reservation or cancel one. Occasionally I even insert pictures. -- Photo by Pat Bean

As part of my planning routine, I plot the proposed route out on my Microsoft Streets & Trips computer software, which I use as my road atlas. I then go online to research the sights along the way, Finally, I use my Trailer Life Directory to find convenient campgrounds for each night’s stop.

This kind of detailed planning takes days and days, but I enjoy doing it. Besides, I’ve discovered that such planning allows me the security of knowing I will have a safe place to stay the night, assures me I won’t overlook interesting places, and provides directions to trails I want to hike.

There are still unexpected rainbows, the shimmer of sun shining down on a field of poppies, and the people whose paths I cross to keep the journey interesting.

There are also days when I trash the plan on a whim so Maggie and I can stay in place for awhile, or take an unplanned side trip. Just because I have a plan doesn’t mean it has to be followed. That’s the magic I allow to remain in my plans.

Read Full Post »

The Badlands: Steeples and Ripples of Striated Color

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , on January 1, 2011| 6 Comments »

A landscape with more appeal to nature lovers than farmers. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Note: Since I have taken the pledge to blog daily, this is the first of 365 blogs for 2011. Maggie, my 13-year-old cocker spaniel co-pilot, and I are now in our seventh year of traveling across America. We live and roll down the road in Gypsy Lee, a 22-foot RV that now has 115,000 miles on her. I hope you join us for the ride.

Travels With Maggie

The Badlands “are so fantastically broken in form and so bizarre in color as to seem hardly properly to belong to this earth.” Theodore Roosevelt

 My RV rocked and rolled for three days in up to 45 mph wind gusts that blew sand down through my air conditioner and into my tiny RV home as I sat out a South Dakota September wind storm just outside of Badlands National Park.

Once an ocean, then a jungle, now bad lands. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 Finally the wind broke – thankfully before my sanity – and I took the opportunity to go exploring. Why, I soon wanted to know was this land called bad. I found its steeples and ripples of striated red and white rocks that reeked with fossil evidence of an ocean, and even a jungle, in its past fascinating. Seeing it for the first time as a I drove through the park was awesome.

 Probably because it was a week day and also because the wind was still haughtily showing off its power in occasional bursts, it seemed as if Maggie and I, and the prairie dogs and rattlesnakes, had the park all to ourselves. Later that night, with the wind still jiggling my RV, I researched the origin of the land’s naming. It was, I discovered, a Sioux thing.

W

Watch where you step. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 The Indians had called it bad land because its formidable terrain was difficult to travel through and because the land was no good for growing things, As one who had traveled the awesome ground on pavement and who didn’t have to grow her own food, I realized my way of loving a land merely for the pleasure it gave me might be considered selfish.

 The thought brought me back to my days as an environmental reporter and my efforts to fairly cover the polarized issues of conservation and economic survival. I had realized back then that neither side was wrong and that compromise was usually the only answer.

 Thankfully, the act turning the Badlands into a national park was a win-win situation for both sides. The land is protected for nature lovers like me while our tourist dollars help keep food on the table for South Dakotans.

The wind was still blowing the next morning when Maggie and I continued our journey down the road. I wondered why someone hadn’t called this place Windyland

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts